Saint John, N.B. Jewish records go online

Valuable archives for genealogical research from the Saint John Jewish Historical Museum (SJJHM) are now available for browsing on the Canadian Jewish Heritage Network (http://www.cjhn.ca).

This is the first contribution from outside Quebec to the CJHN, a joint endeavour of Canadian Jewish Congress and the Jewish Public Library that was launched in 2011.

There are more than 6,600 records online from this new source, consisting of information on Saint John, N.B., Jewish residents, businesses and obituaries.

Compiled by the SJJHM staff and volunteers, and adapted for the web with help from CJC’s national archives, this rich resource draws on more than 180 years of listings, including burials information dating back to 1873, hundreds of full-text obituaries, detailed photographs of tombstones, and business and residential directory details about all the known Jewish residents of this Maritime city from 1863 to 1999.

CJHN researchers can find the Saint John listings though the website’s genealogy/family history database, or through the general keyword search bar located on every page of the site.

In the genealogy search interface, visitors can search exclusively for materials from this region by checking the museum’s name in the repository check box section.

The SJJHM is the only Jewish museum in the Atlantic provinces. It was created in 1986 to preserve the history of the shrinking Jewish community in Saint John, where at one time there were as many as 300 families. Fewer than 35 families remain today.

Additional details about the museum’s archival holdings will be posted online in the coming months. For more information about the archives, contact curator/archivist Katherine Biggs-Craft, at 506-633-1833, e-mail sjjhm@nbnet.nb.ca or visit http://www3.nbnet.nb.ca/sjjhm/.

This project was made possible through the special projects fund of the Alex Dworkin Foundation for Jewish Archives, the primary supporter of the CJHN.

To learn more about the CJHN, contact Janice Rosen, director of Archives, Canadian Jewish Congress Charities Committee National Archives, at 514-937-7531, ext. 2 or e-mail jrosen@cjccc.ca; or Shannon Hodge, director of Jewish public library archives at 514-345-2627, ext. 3015 or shannon.hodge@jplmontreal.org.